This invention relates to the field of book distribution, storage, manufacturing and retailing. However, while most book manufacturing is accomplished by the production of a large quantity of copies of the same book at one time in a factory setting, the present invention involves a computer-based system for the high speed reproduction of a single copy of a selected book, preferably at the consumer point of purchase.
The distribution of books to consumers is usually accomplished through retail stores and mail order catalogue concerns which purchase multiple copies of thousands of different book titles for resale. In a typical retail book store, the major expenses of doing business are rental of retail store space, employee wages and benefits, and inventory maintenance costs including interest on loans and economic losses created by shoplifting, employee pilferage, damage to inventory from customer handling and those costs incurred by unwanted unsaleable inventory. Further costs include those of physically shipping and handling of books from the manufacturer to the retail store. The retail store owner must always attempt the impossible task of accurately predicting future demand for the myriad of books on the market; while the consumer may be frustrated in trying to find a particular book which because of its age or the nature of its subject matter does not provide enough public demand for the retailer to invest his money or space to carry the book in inventory. A system of ordering such books is available through retail stores; however, the customer must wait usually days to procure a book by this method and sometimes the book may not even be in print and thus unavailable.
Similar problems which exist in the retail sales of records and tapes were addressed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,811,325 where a system is disclosed for producing a customized sound recording in a retail environment while the customer waits. While the problems which exist regarding the retailing of sound recordings are similar to those regarding books, the subject matter of the cited patent does not lend itself to improving the above-identified difficulties relating to the sales of books.